Monday, February 16, 2009

Crazy Busy

The past few days have been ridiculously busy, for both myself and my animal family. But busy in a great invigorating way. On Thursday, Sam (my vet) came out to see Whiskey's skin ickies. She thinks its a staph infection and left some oral antibiotics along with the warning that Whiskey would need to stay on antibiotics for at least 3 weeks. This should have made me happy, except Whiskey is an exceptionally picky eater. On Friday (I had the day off), I drove into town to pick up some corn syrup and applesauce. You see, Whiskey will not eat the meds (which according to the bottle are apple flavored), so I made a mixing attempt. I knew from prior adventures with her that she won't eat molasses, so that left me with the two other flavor to attempt. I mixed the oats with her meds and added corn syrup, stirred, and went out to feed her. After 40 minutes of me attempting to coax her into eating them I gave up and returned to the house where I added applesauce. Still no go.

Giving up I thought a couple more days without meds won't kill her, loaded up my car and headed to Wainwright where I'd spend the night before heading south to see Buddy in Consort. While in Wainwright I shopped for large syringes. I have the sneaky feeling I'll end up mixing the meds with water and shooting it into her mouth like a dewormer. Fun times.

Grant has been doing a lot of ground work with Buddy and apologized for not riding him yet. I personally like starting a horse with a solid foundation of ground work so this doesn't bother me. Buddy to date is getting saddled, bridled, ground drove, sacked out and Grant has been putting a dummy on his back. It's funny but Buddy seems to be pretty oral - sticking his tongue every which way. I left my favorite colt bit for Grant to try with him to see if it helps with the tongue. Grant has even stepped up on him and is saddling him from both sides of his body. With all these baby steps, Buddy is enroute to a great start.

Saturday I pulled into the yard at about 7pm, sat down at the computer to finish the ASDA sponsorship package, print it off and say hello to the dogs before going to bed. Sunday morning I drove to Red Deer (2 hours), and spent the day working the ASDA booth with Tessa at the pet expo. Now Tessa is normally a superstar but she has not been out lately and was a ravaging lunatic. Not cool. I actually went to the booth next door and bought a collar with the chain on it in order to have a discussion with her about lack of manners. Major improvement! She suddenly remembered how to follow basic commands.

Today was another early morning as I drove out to Drayton Valley with both Tessa and Reba. Corey, one of my dog guys had asked if I wanted to come out - of course I did! Corey owns Reba's dad and has been very curious to see how Reba was turning out. We worked Tessa first who amazingly was wonderful. She listened well and picked up all of her commands, with the added bonus of doing the entire work without limping or favoring her freshly fixed paw. I'm going to start planning to enter her in some arena trials and get her out more. Reba was also awesome which is phenomenal for a puppy in a strange place. Corey was so impressed with her he said he thought she worked nicer than the full brother he owned. Gotta love compliments on the animals - and the biggest compliment of all - "Is she for sale?" Nope! The other exciting thing that happened while at Corey's is that Corey has offered to switch sheep with me for a while. This is awesome for me because his sheep are super tame and dog broke and mine are still a challenge to work with. This means Corey will get some fresh sheep and I'll get some steady eddie sheep. Great trade! After a month or two we'll flip back. Also great for the dogs.

So now here I am, tired and happy. To put this into perspective: I drove over 1500 kms Friday through Monday. Wow! (That's over 900 miles.)